About the Author

I’m Geoff Rich, a VFX artist in the video game industry and an Army Reservist. An odd mix of youthful liberalism and traditional conservatism that constantly find themselves at odds; I’ve learned to live with it though others may sometimes find it hard.

As is appropriate for someone who makes a living working on video games for a living, I love me some video games. I’ve been gaming in one fashion or another since before I was potty trained (and no, that is not an embarrassing admission at how long I pooped in my own pants as a child). My first games as a child included simple color and letter programs written by my father, and eventually evolved into more mature titles appropriate for someone of that age like “Earnie’s Bathtub Adventure”. All of those ran on DOS.

The first “serious” game I got into was the Forgotten Realms: Pools of Radiance and, later, the sequel The Curse of the Azure Bonds. This is really where this site and its included posts begins, with my exposure to D&D, even though it was a DOS video game rather than the traditional pen and paper variety. I fell in love with RPG’s then, which continues to shine through today.

I grew up, attended college at the Art Institute of Portland and graduated in 2006. After that I took my first job in the industry as a Freelance artist, discovered the joys of visual effects creation and haven’t looked back since. In 2007 I sated another desire I had always had, that was to have the “Army experience”, so I took a break from my entrance into the professional, civilian world and went off to Basic Training. I continue to serve as a Reservist in the US Army.

Throughout all these experiences and growths, however, I never got to do the one thing that I had fallen in love with as a child. I never got to play a tabletop roleplaying game. I had, of course, plenty of excuses for why I didn’t. I didn’t have enough friends that were into it. The ones who did play, played with other groups of friends that were already full. I didn’t know anybody who would run a game. I certainly couldn’t run a game as I hadn’t played one!

Eventually, though, I got desperate. The first excuse was really not that true, I knew plenty of friends that wanted to play, but they, like me, wanted to find a group to play in rather than start one. I still didn’t know anyone else who would run a game I could join.

After careful thought, though, I realized that once upon a time when D&D was first released, there were dozens, hundreds, even thousands of D&D groups that got started even though no one had ever played it before. If those thousands of groups could start a game with nothing but a brand new book they didn’t quite yet understand, then by golly, with the a brand new book I only had a passing understanding of and the assistance of the vast powers of the internet, I could do it too!

That’s when my tabletop gaming career started. My first campaign, that I now begin this blog to document, was a Shadowrun campaign I ran for a group of friends. That game introduced me to a few new people, and got me involved in their campaigns as a player. Ultimately, I found out that what I wanted, a group to play with, was as easy as doing what everyone else wanted, creating a group to play with.

– Geoff